The Robber, A Tale.

by G. P. R. James

For a few paces, nothing interrupted his progress; but the next moment, he stumbled over some object on the ground; and as he attempted to raise himself, his hand came in contact with something that felt like cloth. He instantly drew it back, but, after pausing a moment and hesitating, he stretched it out slowly again, and it lighted upon the cold clammy features of a dead man's face. Starting back, he again fell over the object which had thrown him down before, and which he now found to be a coffin.

Although all these circumstances were in themselves horrible, they served in some degree to relieve the mind of poor John Graves, who now remembered the ruins of the old church, which stood near, and naturally concluded that he had got into the vaults. The confusion of his brain prevented him from remembering that the place had been long unused for its original and legitimate purposes, and he was not one of those who feel any horror at the mere presence of the dead. On the contrary, the sight of the clay after the spirit had departed, seemed to offer to his madness a curious matter of speculation, and he was fond of visiting the chamber of death amongst all the cottages in the neighbourhood.

After he had a little recovered himself, then, he muttered, "It's a corpse! I wonder if it's a man or a woman;" and he put out his hand again towards the face, and ran it over the jaw and lips, to feel for the beard.

"It must be a gentleman, to be put in the vault," he continued; "his hand will tell that! Poor men's hands are hard; and the rich keep their palms soft. I wonder if it is gold makes men's palms soft? Yes, it is a gentleman," he continued, as he slid his hand down the arm to the cold palm of the dead man.

But at that moment a light began to stream through the door by which he had entered, and his terror was once more renewed. "If they catch me here," he muttered, "they will think I am come to steal the coffin plates;" and as the increasing light showed him some of the objects around, he perceived a broken part of the wall which separated that vault from the next, and which lay in ruin amidst the remains of former generations, with many a coffin, stripped of all its idle finery by the hand of time, piled up against it, together with dust and rubbish, and the crumbling vestiges of mortality.

Behind the screen thus formed the half-witted man crept, and lay trembling with a vague dread of he did not well know what; while the light, which by this time had approached close to the door, remained stationary for a moment; and two or three voices were heard speaking in a low tone. The next moment three men descended into the vault, one of whom bore a flambeau in his hand; but for the first two or three minutes after they entered, Silly John could only hear without seeing, as his terror prevented him from making the slightest movement.

"You may as well wipe the blood from off his face before you put him into the box," said one, as he and his companions seemed to stand by the corpse and gaze upon it with curious and speculating eyes.

"That was a deadly shot," said the other. "Poor devil! he never spoke a word after."

"He well deserved it," said a third voice, "that's my opinion; and when that's the case, the deadlier the shot the better. But let us make haste, Master Hardie; though I do not see why he should be buried with that smart belt on. Come, let us toss up for it. Here is a crown-piece. You toss, Hardie."

While this conversation had been going on, the poor half-witted man had remained ensconced behind the coffins and broken wall, trembling in every limb. This tremor assuredly proceeded from fear, and not from cold, for the air, which had been sultry all day, had now grown oppressively hot; and the heavy clouds, which had been rolling up during the evening, like a vast curtain between earth and the free breath of heaven, had by this time covered the whole sky; while a few large drops of rain, pattering amongst the ruins of the church and the broken stones and long grass without, formed no unmusical prelude to the storm that was about soon to descend.